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Commentary: Rep. Cramer says Heitkamp's vote against abortion was 'more like North Korea than North Dakota'

U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp talks about the prospect of temporarily housing refugee children at the Grand Forks Air Force Base during a recent visit to the Grand Forks Herald Editorial Board. photo by Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald

The full audio of today’s radio show is below. You can tune in weekdays from 12-2pm on WDAY 970 AM and 93.1 FM in the Fargo area or subscribe to the podcast and have the audio delivered directly to your device daily.

Congressman Kevin Cramer was on today for his weekly open phones segment, taking questions from the audience, and one of those questions came from Twitter:

How is a party that has such strong control in the state unable to find a candidate capable of beating Heidi Heitkamp (including yourself). The woman literally Hi-fives colleagues after voting down abortion legislation?

The listener is referring to this story about Senator Heidi Heitkamp high fiving Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as her “no” vote on legislation banning abortion after twenty weeks was announced to the Senate floor. The Pulitzer Prize winners at Politifact say it wasn’t really a high five, but whatever.

Cramer said Heitkamp owes an explanation for what happened.

“I’ve not been this blunt about it before, but since you brought it up…when you act more like North Korea than North Dakota you’ve got a problem that you had better start explaining,” he said. “Celebrating doing something that not more than six or seven other countries that would even allow, and the few them that do are North Korea and Vietnam, you just can’t hardly make it up.”

“It was a bad thing to get caught doing whether it was a celebratory hand gesture or a high five or what,” he continued.